Forrest Runquist's six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle churns through a frozen bog 20 miles north of Chisholm.
The trailer is piled high with tight bundles of miniature Christmas trees. The black spruce tops are about 2 feet tall, studded with short, tight needles and tiny pine cones.
Buoyed by a growing demand for these "tabletop trees,'' Runquist and a handful of other large-scale spruce cutters -- most of whom live near Floodwood -- are engaged in fierce competition. The Floodwood Meadowlands area is dotted with black spruce bogs, where the tall, spindly trees grow best, and people have been cutting trees there for a generation.
Hundreds of thousands of these tabletop trees will spruce up hotel entrances and front porches throughout the Twin Cities metro area, where they have become a hot holiday decoration. Most of the trees harvested in northern Minnesota are bought by Twin Cities retailers.
As demand for the trees grows, so does the fear among harvesters that someone else will try to steal their supply.
"It's a cutthroat business,'' Runquist said. Harvesters bad-mouth other harvesters. Bidding on public harvesting sites can go sky-high. People steal trees off public land, and even from each other. Runquist said people have stolen bundles of trees from his storage building and off his trailer.
John Thompson, an area land manager with the St. Louis County Land Department, has heard of fistfights between crews.
Several Floodwood-area treetop cutters either declined to be interviewed for this article or did not return phone calls seeking an interview.
"I don't know anybody in this business with clean hands,'' Thompson said. It's too easy to cut a few extra trees in the remote, uninhabited bogs -- especially when retailers are clamoring for the trees.
CONCERN ABOUT BOGS
Foresters with the Land Department and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources also worry about what the tree-cutters' machines do to the environmentally sensitive bogs.
Walking in a bog will leave an imprint in the soft, springy sphagnum moss. But when ATVs and, especially, larger vehicles such as Bombardiers, are driven over and over the same trail, they can dig ruts that create long-term damage.
Yet foresters don't want to halt the cutting entirely.
They also make money on what would otherwise be unproductive swamp land. The black spruce would never grow large enough to be cut as pulpwood, Thompson said.
The DNR is interested in helping the small cutters survive and consider them an important cottage industry, said Doug Tillna, northeast region timber sales coordinator.
"On the large majority of sales, there's little impact,'' Tillna said. But during the early season, the bog is vulnerable, especially near the wet edges.
Runquist has been harvesting spruce tops for 20 years. He likes the outdoor work and employs a dozen cutters. The money is good though the work is hard.
On Thursday, two DNR foresters accompanied Runquist through the snowy-white spruce bog as he collected bundles. Thor Pakosz and Mike Magnuson said they often visit active cutting sites to weigh tree bundles and monitor site damage.
"Forrest is a good cutter,'' Pakosz said. Runquist's smaller, six-wheeled machines don't cause as much rutting, and they haven't seen significant bog damage on Runquist's sites.
Just a few of Runquist's cutting crew were in the Sturgeon bog site on Thursday, the last day of the season. They had been cutting steadily -- rain, snow or shine -- since mid-September.
Runquist is reluctant to say how many trees his crew harvests in a year, and finally settled on "a lot.''
It's not an easy job -- working 80 days straight, slogging through hip-deep, chilly bog water, swinging a 12-foot-tall pole pruner, stripping and bundling the prickly, sap-sticky spruce tops.
Most people who cut for an entire season lose about 25 pounds, he said.
'YOU'VE GOTTA LIKE IT'
Harvester Chuck Young has been working for Runquist for about 10 years.
"You've gotta like it, or you don't do it,'' Young said as he stacked treetops into neat bundles and tied them tight. He stomped through puffy snowbanks to retrieve tops left behind by Chase Terry of Floodwood, who wielded the pruner.
Terry caught the top of each spruce between the pruner blades, bent the tree to shake off the snow, and with a quick jerk sliced through the thin wood.
Although spruce trees grow slowly -- a century-old tree can be just 20 feet tall -- foresters expect the trees to recover after their tops are cut off. Side branches begin growing up and create a new top that can be harvested in the future, Thompson said.
It's a lucrative operation, he said.
Harvesters pay the state or county between 30 and 50 cents for each tree cut. They pay their crews about 25 cents per tree and can sell a bundle of 10 trees for about $8. A good three-person crew can cut about 100 bundles per day, and cutters can earn about $150 a day, cash, Thompson said.
About a half-million tops are cut off public land in Northeastern Minnesota each year, and more are cut off private land.
GROWING POPULARITY
Spruce tops "have gotten more and more popular over the last five years,'' said Jeff Farrington, assistant manager of Linder's Greenhouse in St. Paul. He estimated his store sells more than 3,000 tops for the holidays. Tops are often sold in bundles of 10, and the smallest fetch $21.99 per bundle.
Troy Grohsman, owner of Miller Creek Garden Center in Hermantown, has sold locally harvested spruce tops for 18 years. Some people buy them potted, others buy tops and other ornamental greens by the pound.
Bundles of 10-inch spruce tops sell for $9.99, while the 2-foot bundles go for $17.99 at Miller Creek.
Grohsman said they are slowly catching on as a decoration in the Northland -- ironically, the same place they grew. Grohsman took delivery of his third truckload of spruce tops on Friday. He sells spruce tops right up until Christmas Eve.
The Twin Cities market will buy all the spruce tops northern Minnesota can supply, Thompson said.
But it's getting harder to find cutting sites, Runquist said. He used to buy permits from the Department of Natural Resources to cut spruce tops on state land, paying 10 cents a top.
Because tree theft began getting out of hand, the state and county began selling the tops at auction, much like a timber sale. Price wars among the larger harvesters have kept new cutters from entering the market.
Treetop thefts -- illegal cutting out in the bog -- have continued, though Thompson said it isn't as bad as it once was.
Land Department staff have buzzed over active cutting sites in spotter planes to keep an eye on cutters, and Thompson's staff has investigated about 10 complaints of illegal cutting over the years.
Enforcement is difficult at the isolated sites, but at least two people have been charged with stealing spruce tops off public land in the past decade, including a Chisholm man charged for rustling nearly 27,000 tree tops in 2003.
"I think they know we're watching,'' Thompson said.Duluth News Tribune
